Thursday, August 4, 2011

Making Paper

Life is nothing if not an opportunity to leverage our tools (eyes, hammer, brain, engine, hands, etc.) and experiences (crawling, printing a t-shirt, making a friend, writing a story, planting a seed, etc.) to create something more amazing than the last.

Paper before screen printing to make business cards.

This is not how I would have defined life three years ago. But running a creative business has changed my perspective completely. And my creative juices have been flowing harder than Iguazu Falls.

Mom in front of Iguazu Falls. Photo credit: me!

At Evan Webster Ink, we strongly encourage experimentation and "no-box" thinking. This has had the positive effect of creating a habit of innovation. In the short-term being creative can be difficult or even anti-productive. But in the long-term the benefits are immense. By constantly trying new things Evan Webster Ink's quality and quantity of offerings is constantly improving. But more importantly, attempting to create amazing (and sometimes succeeding!) is plain fun. And I spend a huge portion of my day working. Enjoying work, therefore, is a necessity.

The latest experiment is an especially exciting one. We recently began screen printing on paper. It doesn't even sound worthy of the lengthy introduction you just read (skimmed?). But it's a direction I'm proud we're going in. We recently printed business cards for a restaurant, our own business cards (2 colors on front, 2 on back!), hang tags and gift-box packaging. A variety of custom postcards, greeting cards, event invites, and business cards for an exciting new furniture company in Jamaica Plain are in the works.

All the scraps from the screen printing of business cards.

Final product.

Front of Evan Webster Ink's screen printed business cards.

We made a couple more than a couple.

Oh, and did I mention that we also just printed some hang tags and packaging!